Specific heat calculations for quantum spin chains with Heisenberg-biquadratic exchange in a magnetic field

Abstract

The authors present calculations of the specific heat of 1D quantum spin chains for a number of integrable and non-integrable Hamiltonians, in the presence of a magnetic field. For S=1 the Hamiltonian has both bilinear and biquadratic isotropic exchange and includes ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic versions of the Heisenberg, Takhtajan-Babujian (TB), Lai-Sutherland (LS) (permutation) and biquadratic models. The two methods used are (i) direct numerical diagonalisation for chains of up to nine atoms and (ii) numerical solution of the Bethe ansatz equations for the integrable models (TB and LS). Generalisations of the latter method to S>1 are also given. For the integrable models the two methods give results in good agreement. Various types of behaviour, particularly at low T, are found and these are related to known phase changes at T=0. The results of the first method for the non-integrable Hamiltonians are discussed with reference to the existence of the Haldane gap in the S=1 Heisenberg model and a possible gap in the biquadratic model.